Browsing: History

Taking our “Here’s Why” from the paper to the blog. An explanation for why something is the way it is in the Air Force/military. The protocol for pilots who’ve been shot down has changed from one war to the next: In Korea and Vietnam, for example, a pilot would most likely use Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), an Air Force program best known to provide any military member with the skills to evade capture, survive, while remaining under the military code of conduct. It even proved useful for fighter pilot Scott Francis O’Grady, who used the skill for six…

Taking our “Here’s Why” from the paper to the blog. An explanation for why something is the way it is in the Air Force/military. If you’ve ever been a cadet at the Air Force Academy, or just an attendee at an Academy football game, you’ve probably heard the Falcon Fight song: Fly ye Falcons down the field; Tear the enemy asunder! Bare your talons, make them yield; Give them all your thunder! Spread your strong wings high and wide; Fight for victory! Never say die, keep flying high For your Air Force Academy! This all had to do with retired…

Taking our “Here’s Why” from the paper to the blog. An explanation for why something is the way it is in the Air Force/military. Saluting. Something so common in the military that service members don’t even have to think twice. But does it always require the right hand? According to the Naval Officers Guide, “You will normally salute with your right hand, unless an injury or other reason makes this impracticable, in which case you should salute with your left hand. The custom of offering left-handed salutes under such circumstances is unique to the Navy and Marine Corps; Army and…

“These experiences become engrained in your mind, and never go away.” March 29, 1973, marks the day when then-Capt. Robert Certain was released from a Hanoi prison during Operation Homecoming. “Every year between Christmas and Easter becomes an anxious time for me remembering those Prisoner of War days,” Certain said in an interview with Air Force Times. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his release. On Dec. 18, 1972, President Nixon ordered a campaign against military targets in the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong during the Vietnam War, known as Linebacker II. A part of the 340th Bombardment Squadron…

The Cold War nearly exploded 50 years ago this week when the U.S.learned that the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. On Oct. 22, 1962, North American Aerospace Defense Command went on alert for more than 36 days, the longest air defense alert since the wend of World War II, according to a NORAD news story. NORAD’s role would have been to support any invasion of Cuba and defend air bases in Florida, the news story says. “About 150 NORAD fighter jets were stationed in Florida on a five-minute alert along with 12 Army air defense batteries, 18…

Whether aliens exist or not, the Air Force may have once tried to reach them. The National Archives published parts of recently declassified records from the Aeronautical Systems Division in a document titled, “USAF Project 1794.” Dated in 1956, this document shows the Air Force’s goal to build a supersonic flying … something. According to the National Archives blog, the Air Force had contracted the work out to a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft Ltd. in Ontario, to construct the disk-shaped craft. The “saucer” was designed to be a vertical take-off and landing plane designed to reach a top speed of…

A Maine resident says he’s sure that an old plane ejection seat carried off a western Maine mountain a couple of weeks ago belongs to an Air Force B-52C trainer that crashed in 1963, according to the Bangor Daily News. Pete Pratt, who belongs to a club behind a memorial to the crash, said he will contact the airplane or seat manufacturer to see if serial numbers taken from the historical find can be traced to its position within the jet plane, the Bangor paper reported. He wants to know if the person who was in the seat was one…

A recent study from the American Enterprise Institute concluded that the U.S. Air Force lacks the stealth aircraft to successfully fight China. One expert told Air Force Times it is unlikely China and the U.S. would ever go to war because their two economies are so interconnected, but a reader pointed out afterward that people said the same thing about Great Britain and Germany, which came to blows twice in the last century. Prior to World War I, Germany’s biggest trading partners were Britain and France while Germany was also one of the biggest investors in Russia, giving rise to…

Youtube user “PastYears” just uploaded this video of a Lockheed EC-121T Warning Star Super Constellation taking off for the first time in, according to the cameraman, 15 years. Pretty nice look at history. The Air Force retired the last EC-121 in 1978.